The Thing: accessorizing with horns, tusks and 150-million-year-old dino bones

The newest way to stand out amid the glittering crowd at charity bashes? Sport a bauble made from a loonie-sized chunk of stegosaurus bone. Lately, the city’s socialites have been trading gemstones for Flintstonian jewellery crafted from horn, bone and even fossilized bits of woolly mammoth and dinosaur (all ethically sourced, naturally). The look evolved out of Toronto’s years-long love affair with animal trophies, a fixation that has half the city’s decor shops peddling faux deer, antelope and rhino busts. Unlike a kitschy cardboard moose head, however, these zoological trinkets aren’t cheap—the rough-textured raw materials require an artisan’s touch to tease out their glossy beauty. The result: pieces that perfectly straddle the line between accessory and artifact.

The barrel on William Henry’s fountain pen is made from 6,000- to 10,000-year-old fossilized walrus tusk harvested in Alaska and Siberia. $1,925. <em>Damiani Jewellers, 15 Jevlan Dr., 905-850-4653.</em>

these items encourage a fashion for harvesting animals for jewellery – it doesn’t matter how “ethical” they may seem – we will soon be back to wearing ivory again – no need for these evil items with all the synthetic materials available